


the only piece of you i can touch

by Legendaerie



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Major Character Injury, Whump, World War I, hey aziraphale are you moses because I think you’re in de nile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:28:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legendaerie/pseuds/Legendaerie
Summary: “Aziraphale.”It’s not a voice per say. It’s a feeling, a tug, a little to the north of him. Aziraphale stops and squints. He can just make out a column of smoke rising in the early evening sky.“Aziraphale,”comes the pull again. He focuses on it this time, meeting it with his own spiritual touch.—-The line between mercy and cruelty is a fine one, indeed.





	the only piece of you i can touch

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from please eat by Nicole Dollanganger - eating disorder TWs, listen with caution
> 
> Freshly back from a con and FINALLY finished this piece. Bless Amalli, my “useless kouhai” for being my beta. “Senpai” is very thankful for the help, and will never address themselves as such again.

It is December 26th, 1914, and Aziraphale doesn’t want to be on Earth anymore. 

He is exhausted. The miracle he performed the prior day along the German and British line was one of his hardest yet - a full day of sustained peace, all while knowing that as soon as he let up, War would stir it all up again. He had heard her whispering dissent to the officers on both sides, trying to stop the games they were holding on the frozen no-man’s-land between the trenches, yet the might of Heaven held strong.

But today is December 26th, and the pain of the dead and the dying are vibrating through his body as though his very skeleton is a tuning fork. It hurts, this slaughter - he loves so much of Creation, to see it wasted and to not be able to stop the fighting for more than a day is agony. Walking down the road of a gutted farm town, feeling every rock under the soles of his borrowed shoes, he understands now why Crowley slept for a century.

“_Aziraphale.” _

He’s not much for a pub, but maybe if he can gather enough strength to miracle over to one, he might have a few drinks. For now, however, he is retiring to his room at the inn under the guise of a visiting veterinarian and he is going to bury his head under the pillows.

“_Aziraphale.” _

It’s not a voice per say. It’s a feeling, a tug, a little to the north of him. Aziraphale stops and squints. He can just make out a column of smoke rising in the early evening sky.

“_Aziraphale,_” comes the pull again. He focuses on it this time, meeting it with his own spiritual touch.

He feels—

Black and gold and orange like embers, smooth scales under his fingertips, the taste of oysters in the back of his throat and a memory of a perfect black pearl on his tongue. A million other moments crowded together, blurring into one.

“_Crowley—!” _

He doesn’t consciously perform the miracle. By the time he opens his eyes, he is already there.

Aziraphale is not afraid of fire, but the scene around him sickens him to the reek of smoke for years to come. He’s in the middle of a street with shattered cobblestone roads, the buildings around him collapsed and burning; the screams of terrified horses and the shouts of men are a shock to Aziraphale’s senses. In the chaos, no one has noticed the man who has suddenly appeared in their midst, hunting for his friend in the gruesome scene.

“Crowley? Crowley, where are you?” Aziraphale calls first with his voice and then with his soul, closing his eyes to focus.

The pain of the dead and dying around him thrums through his body, cutting straight to his empathetic soul. He gasps, staggers under the weight of it, and his focus breaks. Sirens wail above him, their voices sick and low like dying cattle.

He wishes he’d learned how to stop time like Crowley can, just to have a moment to breathe. Maybe, if he hurries—

“Crowley!” he calls again, both voices at once. “Crowley!”

The answer is weak, but there - in the ruins of the shop just a couple buildings down. Aziraphale storms inside, white coat and all.

The smoke burns his eyes and the inside of his nose - he holds his breath and reaches out with his soul again, feeling for Crowley in the inferno. There, pinned under the collapsed second floor, a long limbed man with cracked black sunglasses.

“Crowley! What are you doing?”

He feels like a fool the moment he speaks, but Crowley doesn’t answer. Just coughs, blood spluttering down his chin with the effort. A ceiling beam, still burning, breaks and starts to fall - Aziraphale rushes over, manifesting his wings to deflect the falling lumber and shelter them both.

“Why are you _ hurt_?” he asks, kneeling at Crowley’s side. It shouldn’t be possible in his mind; not Crowley. Never Crowley.

The demon makes a weak gesture. “Hell’s not picking up,” he rasps.

Makes sense that he can’t breathe right. There’s a wooden support beam in the middle of his chest.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Aziraphale promises. “Hold on—”

He doesn’t make it nearly as far as he wanted with his miracle - just enough to make it out of the epicenter of the bombing. A little park, with barren trees tall and dark as wrought iron fenceposts above a fine layer of snow.

Aziraphale lands on top of Crowley, pulling back just in time as to not crush him. Not fast enough to not stain his coat on the blood still oozing from the mess of Crowley’s chest. It’s bleeding faster now that the wood has been removed, and Crowley is shuddering under Aziraphale.

He’s _ dying. _

“What’s happening?” Aziraphale asks, grabbing Crowley’s shoulders. Crowley is never the one caught unawares, on the wrong foot. It’s terrifying to see him like this, pale and shaking.

“Guess— they found out about Christmas— s’pposed to thwart you but didn’t get around to it—” Crowley makes an effort not to cough. “Don’ worry. I’ll find another body in a few decades. Convince ‘em to let me come back.”

“I can heal you—”

“Won’t work. You’ll smite me, angel. We’re—” he swallows. “We’re not made of the same starlight anymore. I _ fell._”

He’s right. It burns him more than the fire did. “You can’t leave! We—” Aziraphale struggles to find words for the dread in his chest and settles on betrayal. “We had a deal!”

Crowley sticks his tongue out at him, long and forked. The insolent gesture is too weak to be rude.

“Do me a favor?” Crowley asks. “Take off my glasses? Wanna— see it without the darkness for a moment.”

Aziraphale grits his teeth and summons up the last dregs of his divine power. “No. I won’t let you die.”

“Careful. Best not let them see you want like this. Sssselfish,” and a heavy sigh plumes pale in the cold air above his mouth. Then, nothing.

Love, in any form, can be cruel. 

What Aziraphale does he will later claim to be fighting the will of Hell. Keeping Crowley stationed here, a demon he knows how to counter well, and doubling down on the blow they cost the enemy with the Christmas cease fire. But the method in which he does this is unbecoming of a being of light and mercy.

Like an entomologist pinning a desiccated butterfly to a board so that they can admire its beauty, Aziraphale binds Crowley to his assigned, dying body.

“_You will not die_,” he repeats, and the heart in that shattered chest finds a way to keep beating despite the blood still soaking into the snow around them.

Crowley takes in another breath, and another, and another. Aziraphale stands, lifts him up and cradles him to his chest, and starts walking.

“You will not die, I said.”

The demon in his arms makes an aggravated sound and stirs weakly. Aziraphale only holds him tighter, pain starting to form in his temple from the effort.

“No, you old serpent. I will not— let you die.”

Doctor. He has to find a doctor. Where is—

Up and down the streets he goes, chanting a prayer under his breath the entire time — “you will not die, you will not die” — and staring desperately at every door, every street corner. Several times people run past him but no one ever stops to answer him. 

He’s so tired. So, so tired. It hurts, like ripping out a flight feather, but Aziraphale whisks them both onto the doorstep of the nearest hospital.

“Please, my friend,” he gasps as he shoulders open the door, “he’s dying.”

“He can get in line,” snaps a voice somewhere in the sea of humanity - beds upon beds upon beds of people, many of whom are in pieces, and the nurses tending to them in swarms. 

Aziraphale clutches Crowley to him and repeats his plea. “I can’t help him. Everyone else I’ve ever— I could help them, but I can’t—“

No one pays him any regard.

“_Give it up_,” Crowley whispers in Aramaic. 

“_I will not!” _

That gets them some looks - none of which are friendly. Aziraphale feels a flash of anger, which he’ll later blame on the influences of the demon dying in his arms, at their hypocrisy. They were all made in Her image, every last one of them, but still insist on drawing lines that divide them up over and over again. _These_ _people_ can only go _here_, _these_ are worth _this much_, so on and so forth.

As soon as it’s there, the anger is gone. Bless them in their ignorance, oh Lord.

It feels like a miracle when one of the nurses stops and looks at them both. She’s exhausted and there’s blood all over her clothes, but she curls her fingers towards them in a weary movement.

“Come here. I have a bed open, now.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says, and resolves to bless the next three generations of her family with good fortune and health as soon as he is able.

The nurse wipes sweat off her brow and nods, oblivious to the impact of her kindness. With some hesitation, Aziraphale lays Crowley out onto the bed.

“He’s still alive?” she asks.

“In a manner of speaking—”

“Angel,” Crowley rasps, his lungs inflating with the effort and more blood oozing out. “Shut it.”

“Well,” and the nurse seems to brace herself. “I’m going to need to clean out the wounds. It’s going to hurt.”

The look she gives him is apology and warning both.

Aziraphale bites the inside of his cheek. “I… I will hold him down.”

The body that Aziraphale inhabits has softened, somewhat, with all of his years in leisure upon the Earth. However, it was originally made for power and combat - and unlike a regular human body, Aziraphale’s strength only has to be _ needed _ to be present. And it is very much needed here, as Crowley’s thrashings would have tossed mere mortals aside.

Aziraphale is only hurt by Crowley’s voice, which rises slowly in pitch and volume as his wounds are re-opened and peaks in a horrific scream that takes a considerable amount of Grace for Aziraphale to counteract. Worse still when it peters off at the end, as Crowley sinks into a numb state as his body goes into shock.

Throughout all of it, Aziraphale keeps his face pressed into the crook of Crowley’s neck, keeping up his steady prayers. “You will not die, you will not die, you will not die…”

It feels as though an hour has passed when the nurse stands and backs away.

“He’s in the Lord’s hands now,” she says simply. “Let’s hope he lasts the night. Oh. Sir? You’re bleeding.”

Aziraphale touches the side of his neck and feels it come away wet. “Oh…”

Crowley must have bitten him. He didn’t even feel the pain. 

“It’s— it’s all right.”

“Do you want a bandage?”

“No, no I’m fine.”

The nurse sighs. “All right. Let me know. It’s the one thing we still have in supply.”

He’s already used a lot of miracles in the last two days, but he still can’t resist one quick prayer Upwards as the nurse moves on.

Very seldom do divine beings get to experience this particular emotional cocktail known as powerlessness - the fear, the frustration, the tenderness and the ache to do something to aid the person you love. But Aziraphale sat by Crowley’s side all night, holding the anchor in his body and trying not to pray for him. Every so often he has to get up and walk around, loosen up the healing aura he’s bottling up that’s causing an awful cramp up his spine and erases wounds by virtue of being nearby and thinking healing thoughts. 

There is so little that is beyond his borrowed power - so little that Aziraphale cannot at least _ try _ to fix. Even less common is to want to help and be _ unable _ to do so, as on _ those _ occasions Crowley had often been able to intervene for him. If he had been human, he might have compared it to trying to think oneself to sleep, all wasted effort and anxiety. As he isn’t, all he can do is sit and guard and ache.

Night passes into morning, and brings a meager breakfast. Morning passes into afternoon where Aziraphale declines the offered lunch and into night again. His nose begins to bleed around this time - a physical manifestation of the spiritual strain, and he presses kerchiefs to his nose to stem the tide.

But helplessness is not the only thing to gnaw at him. Crowley is suffering under his touch, bound to a body that should have been allowed to die. It feels wrong to do this, eats at him like their Arrangement does sometimes, and yet—

And yet. A phrase that keeps being applicable to Crowley, over and over again.

Aziraphale presses the back of his hand against Crowley’s brow, pretending to feel for a fever. Crowley’s soul is faint but there, slowly working away at healing his body in the tedious human way. No assistance from Hell that he can feel. 

His mind drifts back a few decades, when Crowley had asked him for a favor. Insurance, he’d called it, and Aziraphale hadn’t known what he had meant. Hadn’t thought it possible for a demon to be anything _ but _ a demon, as cursed as Aziraphale is blessed. That’s two favors he’s refused Crowley, if he counts not removing his glasses to let him pass in peace. They feel considerably less like mercies now. 

Where would Crowley go, if Hell cast him out?

His hand is still on Crowley’s brow, the backs of his fingers tracing along the hairline. He doesn’t want Crowley disincorporated, and even less so does he want him _ destroyed. _ They are friends, he supposes, though he is afraid of the label and what it might mean for his own spiritual alignment. Never know how easy it is to fall until you’ve already started.

With a mind of their own, Aziraphale’s fingertips trace the angular lines of Crowley’s jaw, his own heartbeat quickening. Crowley was an angel once. They all were. Perhaps—

“Sir?”

It’s a different nurse this time, with a pinched expression on his face.

“Yes?” Aziraphale asks, keeping his voice soft.

The nurse clears his throat. “We’re very crowded in here, and it would be best if you… would leave. Now.”

And he gives a meaningful look to the man whose face Aziraphale is caressing.

The angel retracts his hand as though hellfire burned under the demon’s skin. “Y-yes. Of course. Forget you saw me,” he says with a little flourish, and the nurse’s eyes glaze over and unfocus. “And take care of my friend, please.”

“Understood.”

Aziraphale hurries out of the hospital, adjusting his suit jacket with a self-conscious gesture. The wool is rough with dried blood that had bloomed out from Crowley’s chest when he’d cradled his dying adversary. He’d forgotten, in the heat of the moment.

One more miracle among the many he’s made in the last two days, and the stain vanishes. The memory, however - the guilt for what he has done - will not so easily be erased.


End file.
